1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a booting method and an apparatus thereof for debugging in a portable terminal. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for performing booting such that a boot loader region and an operating system region do not overlap.
2. Description of the Related Art
To meet the trend of small-sized and lightweight products with Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) developments and a computing technique, various small-sized portable terminals have been introduced. As the demand for a small-sized and lightweight portable terminal rapidly increases, additional functions provided to the portable terminal are diversified. As the additional functions provided to the portable terminal are diversified, a program in the portable terminal becomes more complicated, and an unexpected defect of the program, that is, a malfunction of the program occurs frequently.
Generally, when a malfunction of a program occurs in the portable terminal, information regarding the malfunction is obtained from a Random Access Memory (RAM) using a debugging tool, and the malfunction is resolved. However, in a case where a malfunction such as a lockup and an operation stoppage of the portable terminal occurs, information regarding the malfunction cannot be obtained even when the above debugging tool is used. For example, in a case where an error occurs in an Operating System (OS) of the portable terminal and rebooting is performed, a portion of data stored in the RAM is deleted due to the booting process and the information regarding the erroneous OS cannot be obtained.
FIG. 1 is a view illustrating a RAM in a case where an OS is normally stacked according to the related art, and FIG. 2 is a view illustrating a RAM in a case where rebooting is performed according to the related art. Referring to FIG. 1, the booting process denotes a process in which a boot loader 100 stacked in a RAM stacks an OS 110 stored in a flash memory in the RAM. That is, referring to FIG. 2, when an error occurs 200 in the OS, the portable terminal performs a rebooting process, which is a process of turning off power and performing booting. At this point, the portable terminal uses a boot loader stacked in a preset region 220 of the RAM in order to perform booting, and the region 220 in which the boot loader is stacked may overlap a region 210 in which the OS has been stacked before the rebooting. In this case, a portion of data regarding the erroneous OS is deleted, so that debugging for resolving the error cannot be performed.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and an apparatus for performing a booting process for debugging in a portable terminal.